Ask HN: What blocks you from switching your small-to-medium business to Linux?
Question for small-to-medium business owners, working primarily with office suite type of software (think Microsoft Office programs, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint) - what is stopping you from switching from Windows to Linux? I am also interested to hear stories about unsuccessful switch to Linux and why you reverted back to Windows.
45 comments
Being in the legal field, I need to transfer documents and be sure they are formatted correctly. LibreOffice is maybe 90% as easy as Word at creating documents, but editing and saving Word files it frequently messes up something. Sometimes it's minor and sometimes it's not, but I'm not going to spend 11⅑% more effort making documents in addition to taking that chance just to avoid Microsoft.
In addition, there's nothing close to Outlook. Thunderbird works okay, but it's definitely not an acceptable replacement. I'd sooner use Outlook's webmail.
In addition, there's nothing close to Outlook. Thunderbird works okay, but it's definitely not an acceptable replacement. I'd sooner use Outlook's webmail.
Would you mind to elaborate what makes you stick to Outlook?
Was a heavy user myself but years ago moved to Apple Mail and never look back
Was a heavy user myself but years ago moved to Apple Mail and never look back
>what makes you stick to Outlook?
Not that poster, but in my experience there are often plugins that make it difficult to switch from Outlook to other clients. In many cases you can find a replacement plugin, but it takes time and resources to evaluate new software. Also, at a more general level, even though LibreOffice is a good replacement for the base functionality of the Microsoft Office suite, many VBA macros would need to be ported over.
Not that poster, but in my experience there are often plugins that make it difficult to switch from Outlook to other clients. In many cases you can find a replacement plugin, but it takes time and resources to evaluate new software. Also, at a more general level, even though LibreOffice is a good replacement for the base functionality of the Microsoft Office suite, many VBA macros would need to be ported over.
Thanks for sharing your experience
Did you try onlyoffice?
We are a 40 to 50-ish company and have been running Linux on our desktops since 2005. Back then our stack consisted of Gnome with roaming homedirs on AFS, LDAP and Kerberos. As office suite we used OpenOffice / LibreOffice. For groupware we used Open-Xchange since 2005 all the way to something like 2018 I think. For ERP/CRM we used (and still use) iDempiere (started out as Compiere waaaay back, then migrated to the Adempiere fork, then the iDempiere fork).
The desktop was always a RedHat based derivative. Preloading desktops with Anaconda kickstart via PXE. I believe we started with Fedora and switched to CentOS for the predictability. And recently switched to Rocky Linux because of the new positioning of CentOS.
However nowadays we mostly use our Linux desktop with Google Workspace (Spreadsheets, Drive, etc.) and no longer self host OX, AFS, etc.
The desktop was always a RedHat based derivative. Preloading desktops with Anaconda kickstart via PXE. I believe we started with Fedora and switched to CentOS for the predictability. And recently switched to Rocky Linux because of the new positioning of CentOS.
However nowadays we mostly use our Linux desktop with Google Workspace (Spreadsheets, Drive, etc.) and no longer self host OX, AFS, etc.
Fascinating! @jsiepkes Would you be willing to divulge the industry that your company is in?
I switched full time more than decade ago, I was part-time before the switch. I often hear colleagues ranting that they don't want to spend time on setting things up (like audio, or dual screen, or figuring out how to connect their laptop to beam projector). I admit I am sometimes forced to spend some time fixing stuff that does not work to my liking, other times I have to fix something I have broken myself. Never more than an hour, and most of the times I manage to learn something new about my system. I would not trade my Arch for anything else in the world.
Small business owner. Consultant. I've been a Windows user and developer for 2 decades. I get immense value from my work station with Windows 10 on it (will update to Windows 11 soon) and I get immense value from my Office 365 Business subscription as well as my home one. Windows has a broad range of corporate tools that I haven't even gotten to the level where I have use of them, so for the time being, I don't see any disadvantage.
I can just work with client files as they all use Windows, I can use all my favorite development tools, I can play my favorite games. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to have experienced, all my Windows devices have been plug and play for the longest time. I can make pretty presentations in Powerpoint and just send them to customers. I can collaborate on Word documents with other people, get spell checked, have actually humane formatting (I'm looking at you OpenOffice, Libre)... anyway, I'm just listing benefits, I could go on for a long time.
What advantages would switching to Linux bring me at this point? I run all my servers on Linux and wouldn't switch that to Windows for ideological reasons.
I can just work with client files as they all use Windows, I can use all my favorite development tools, I can play my favorite games. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to have experienced, all my Windows devices have been plug and play for the longest time. I can make pretty presentations in Powerpoint and just send them to customers. I can collaborate on Word documents with other people, get spell checked, have actually humane formatting (I'm looking at you OpenOffice, Libre)... anyway, I'm just listing benefits, I could go on for a long time.
What advantages would switching to Linux bring me at this point? I run all my servers on Linux and wouldn't switch that to Windows for ideological reasons.
Because Linux isn't a _product_, it's a piece of infrastructure. Whereas the suite of technologies you list are products, where a company gets rewarded financially for them working well.
Frankly, people aren't usually interested in the last 10% to 'make it work' if it isn't a labor of love for them OR they're getting paid to make the last 10% work. When its no longer fun, they want to move onto the next thing. A LOT of a successful software product simply isn't fun, its just work that needs to get done.
Frankly, people aren't usually interested in the last 10% to 'make it work' if it isn't a labor of love for them OR they're getting paid to make the last 10% work. When its no longer fun, they want to move onto the next thing. A LOT of a successful software product simply isn't fun, its just work that needs to get done.
I am a very small business, just me. I am thinking of jumping to Linux because of the direction that Windows is going. Soon your computer will be like your cell phone, completely locked down and owned by MS.
For me the killer is Outlook which has all my client info and the ability to print on my Dymo printer. I can live with Libre Office for docs and I can probably find other work arounds but the transition doesn't look easy.
For me the killer is Outlook which has all my client info and the ability to print on my Dymo printer. I can live with Libre Office for docs and I can probably find other work arounds but the transition doesn't look easy.
Long time Linux user being forced to use Windows occasionally...I don't know how you folks stand it. It feels like every time I boot it I get half dozen notifications, ads disguised as security, telling me I need to restart now even though I just booted it. Maybe it's my own ignorance, but wow.
Outlook is a killer application, I agree. The web version is actually pretty useable IMO, so much so that it's all I use anymore. Evolution is an open source Outlooky application that I used to use and does work quite well, if you prefer native.
Printing to Dymo should be possible, I did a cursory search and a few people seem to have gotten it to work. Won't be as straightforward as Windows, I'm sure.
I think the biggest thing missing in Linux is Excel, which luckily I don't use or need to use these days. The LibreOffice equivalent is nowhere near as easy to use IMO. Anyone who uses Excel heavily I probably wouldn't promote Linux to.
Outlook is a killer application, I agree. The web version is actually pretty useable IMO, so much so that it's all I use anymore. Evolution is an open source Outlooky application that I used to use and does work quite well, if you prefer native.
Printing to Dymo should be possible, I did a cursory search and a few people seem to have gotten it to work. Won't be as straightforward as Windows, I'm sure.
I think the biggest thing missing in Linux is Excel, which luckily I don't use or need to use these days. The LibreOffice equivalent is nowhere near as easy to use IMO. Anyone who uses Excel heavily I probably wouldn't promote Linux to.
Exactly what I want to avoid. I see updates roll in and then suddenly there is "News and Info" app on the tool bar that pops up randomly to make sure you stay connected to the the borg.
I don't need nor want this. Also, as I mentioned, I don't want to be on Windows as they turn the screws to lock it down and farm/spy on me. The precursor to this is MS had an S-Mode version of Win10 when it first came out which blocked you from installing anything not from the MS store but you could disable it. How long will that be an option, Win12?
In any case, I am out and probably going to move to Linux before the end of the year. My primary PC is Win8.1, a Win7 bench PC for cloning and a Win10 laptop for service work. I did some research already and Dymo kinda-sorta has support for Linux drivers and others got it working so I am hopeful.
I don't need nor want this. Also, as I mentioned, I don't want to be on Windows as they turn the screws to lock it down and farm/spy on me. The precursor to this is MS had an S-Mode version of Win10 when it first came out which blocked you from installing anything not from the MS store but you could disable it. How long will that be an option, Win12?
In any case, I am out and probably going to move to Linux before the end of the year. My primary PC is Win8.1, a Win7 bench PC for cloning and a Win10 laptop for service work. I did some research already and Dymo kinda-sorta has support for Linux drivers and others got it working so I am hopeful.
Sounds like your Windows install sucks. Pro or Enterprise version has minimal to no nags or shenanigans. Do not run the home version if you can help it.
> like your cell phone, completely locked down
Unless you switch to a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).
Unless you switch to a GNU/Linux phone (Librem 5 or Pinephone).
That is probably in the cards. I currently have an Android phone and I had to create a Google (Do Evil) account to set it up then logged out. All Google apps/services are disabled, as much as possible without rooting it. Its never been updated in 3-4 years and I don't use it for much other than email, phone, text and (rarely) a web/FF search. I recently had to update an app and after the reconnect the Google apps/services greyed out the DISABLE buttons. Fortunately, I was able to revert to as-shipped Google apps and was able to re-disable them.
I am hoping to get off of Windows by the end of the year (currently on Win8.1 which clocks out in January) then probably move to a phone not controlled by Google next year.
I am hoping to get off of Windows by the end of the year (currently on Win8.1 which clocks out in January) then probably move to a phone not controlled by Google next year.
As @silisili noted, maybe Evolution could work for you. If you have a spare machine, maybe give one of the more boring Linux distributions a try and install Evolution, and test out your workflow with it. Don't try to customize things beyond what you need for your workflow. Just tweak it enough to fullfill what you need to do your job. Plus try out the printing via your Dymo printer...and see how it goes. If there were other apps, i wouild suggest trying them out via WINE...but maybe that's not needede for email and Dymo printer? Good luck!
Thanks for the tip, I will look into Evolution. Don't need anything fancy and my work flow is email, web, scan, print (labels and docs) and occasional spreadsheet so I think it is doable without too much pain. All my PCs are currently running Windows 8.1 right now (lol) which clocks out in January and I do have a Win10 laptop but mostly for service work, not my main computer.
I did a little research on Dymo and they kinda-sorta provide driver support for Linux so some have been able to get it to work.
I did a little research on Dymo and they kinda-sorta provide driver support for Linux so some have been able to get it to work.
Not the owner, but the one of the principal decision makers for this sort of thing. We're an org that just hit 100 employees and prior to migrating our ancient software stack to heavily utilize 365 offerings we looked into Linux, especially for cost savings. The reason we didn't go with it, and the reason we lean so hard into 365 now, is the traditional Office product. Word formatting, Excel macros, conditional document access, basically everything about the Exchange/Outlook ecosystem, all of it is absolutely necessary for our B2B work. The only thing that comes even close to meeting our requirements is corporate GSuite accounts and using Linux as a fancy, and difficult to secure, thin client for those offerings. So we decided why choose the lesser evil and now pay Microsoft thousands a month to not think very hard.
When i ran my little side hustle, almost all of my customers cared about only 2 things (related to your question):
1) They wanted training on any software. These were not "techies". These people who ran or worked in small businesses, and did not care if their machine was Windows, or their apps were Microsoft or whatever...as long as they were trained, and ideally some training/hep docs were available to them, they were happy.
2) As long as files that they needed to send/receive with/from their customers and other partner firms was ok, and not botched/messed up...then they were happy. For some of my customers, this became the biggest sticking point, and some times not in their control. For some customers, i could pivot them into different directions, for example, create web portals so their customers didn;'t need Word docs sent to them in the first place, or maybe send a PDF (exported from LibreOffice), etc. Some customers were open to different directions, others felt uncomfortable.
I will add that if i were a better sales person (I'm a way better wingman to sales, but not great at closing slaes on my own)...for item #2 above, there were plenty of opportunities to create apps/services that could be sold to customers to semi-automate the creatuion of more "conventional" office file formats. I had little success, not because of tech constraints, but moreso because i could not close deals. The challenge is changing the minds of customers towards solutions that could be cheaper, better in the long term...Microsoft's hold on business mindshare is not easy to undo.
1) They wanted training on any software. These were not "techies". These people who ran or worked in small businesses, and did not care if their machine was Windows, or their apps were Microsoft or whatever...as long as they were trained, and ideally some training/hep docs were available to them, they were happy.
2) As long as files that they needed to send/receive with/from their customers and other partner firms was ok, and not botched/messed up...then they were happy. For some of my customers, this became the biggest sticking point, and some times not in their control. For some customers, i could pivot them into different directions, for example, create web portals so their customers didn;'t need Word docs sent to them in the first place, or maybe send a PDF (exported from LibreOffice), etc. Some customers were open to different directions, others felt uncomfortable.
I will add that if i were a better sales person (I'm a way better wingman to sales, but not great at closing slaes on my own)...for item #2 above, there were plenty of opportunities to create apps/services that could be sold to customers to semi-automate the creatuion of more "conventional" office file formats. I had little success, not because of tech constraints, but moreso because i could not close deals. The challenge is changing the minds of customers towards solutions that could be cheaper, better in the long term...Microsoft's hold on business mindshare is not easy to undo.
None of my main tools run (at all/adequately/stably) on it even with compatibility stuff like Wine.
Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher
Ableton Live
Various Native Instruments gadgets
Serum
Scrivener
Linux is fine. It just doesn't have the software I need. No, none of the things you want to mention will do. Yes, I used them extensively before I had what I have now. I feel the need to say this because people will often stroll in with the assumption that I just don't know what's available or tried it too long ago for the experience to be credible.
Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher
Ableton Live
Various Native Instruments gadgets
Serum
Scrivener
Linux is fine. It just doesn't have the software I need. No, none of the things you want to mention will do. Yes, I used them extensively before I had what I have now. I feel the need to say this because people will often stroll in with the assumption that I just don't know what's available or tried it too long ago for the experience to be credible.
I have two identical Dell boxes, one running Windows 10, the other Fedora. I have been using Windows since version 1 (a real dog) and Fedora since version 10. The Win system is my main workhorse because: 1. I need to exchange highly complex Word documents with my clients and LibreOffice is just not 100% compatible (although improving slowly). 2. The onset of RSI means that I'm heavily dependent on Nuance Dragon for dictating and it's not available for Linux (and Wine seems unable to run it). 3. Plug and play - my Brother colour laser printer worked perfectly with Windows from the moment I plugged it in. Linux recognised it as just a plain text printer; after some searching, I found I had to open a terminal and type in three lines of gobbledegook - and even then it didn't work. NOT good enough!
I quite like Linux despite the amateurish appearance of its GUI (and whoever thought that shrinking the vertical scroll bars to the minimum was a good idea?) but at the end of the day my priority has to be getting my work done and so far Windows is ahead of the pack. Oh, and another thing: I don't think Linux will ever gain an important place on the desktop while there are so many distros around. Three at the most with absolutely no compatibility issues between them is what's needed. One would be even better - it doesn't really matter which one.
I've been a Windows user since Win95, used it professionally since Win98 SE. I'm just so used to it that it became second nature to me. I've dabbled in some Linux blends but for one reason or another I always:
- Hated the looks of it - Something got borked - Had issued with drivers - None of my apps run well on it.
I need Windows because it does what I need it to do: Operate my system. I don't use Office nor Outlook because I never send emails or write documents and if I HAVE to write a document I'll jot it in Notion or just in EditPadLite. I just need Windows because it runs all my apps properly, all the time. I'm sure a Mac can as well, but I'm not going to spend 2500 on a laptop that overheats and has a terrible keyboard. Linux, any blend, is just out of the question for me. And seeing what Microsoft has been doing to make Windows more developer friendly, now all tools that used to require a Linux command line, now work fine in Windows CMD. I'm talking about node, npm, chocolatey, python, php. It's all just installed and working fine. And therefore I don't want to switch. At all.
- Hated the looks of it - Something got borked - Had issued with drivers - None of my apps run well on it.
I need Windows because it does what I need it to do: Operate my system. I don't use Office nor Outlook because I never send emails or write documents and if I HAVE to write a document I'll jot it in Notion or just in EditPadLite. I just need Windows because it runs all my apps properly, all the time. I'm sure a Mac can as well, but I'm not going to spend 2500 on a laptop that overheats and has a terrible keyboard. Linux, any blend, is just out of the question for me. And seeing what Microsoft has been doing to make Windows more developer friendly, now all tools that used to require a Linux command line, now work fine in Windows CMD. I'm talking about node, npm, chocolatey, python, php. It's all just installed and working fine. And therefore I don't want to switch. At all.
I tried to work out with Linux. Got it running for cca 1 year, where every day I was forced to solve random weird issues. One day Linux wanted to install graphic drivers (Got NVidia card), tried to install by some random manual, ended up with black screen after restart, rage quitted, formatted, installed Windows.
Since then I am using Linux only when there is no other option possible - either in VM or on RPi.
Since then I am using Linux only when there is no other option possible - either in VM or on RPi.
My 20-person biotech startup runs on Linux including the workstations of a vast majority of employees.
There are definitely pain points, but also substantial productivity gains. For anybody trying this, my advice would be to attempt to ship the lowest number of possible HW configurations internally - with the ideal being having everybody on a same model of a laptop.
There are definitely pain points, but also substantial productivity gains. For anybody trying this, my advice would be to attempt to ship the lowest number of possible HW configurations internally - with the ideal being having everybody on a same model of a laptop.
All this talk about "I need Office to be Office" and no one mentions o365 online? Which works just fine on Linux. Also label printing seems a common issue but no mention of support of old old old legacy hardware that still works perfectly fine. For instance, my scanner which still works perfectly fine but won't work on Windows or Mac anymore works just fine on Linux because of the legacy driver support.
Not a business owner. Programmer who was a sysadmin in a former life and is familiar with all three O/S and a few others, e.g. embedded firware, etc.
In every organization, there is usually one app that ties a particular user to a non Linux OS, e.g. usually it's Adobe products, sometimes active directory, sometimes it's because "we have Access and it does everything we need it to and no we don't know what it does anymore", we need X software for X platform because skillsets and training.
A lot of lawyers would still (and some still are) be on WordPerfect if they could be, some accountants are probably still on FoxPro somewhere out there, but IME most users just need a Chromebook and a subscription to o365. Maybe ChromeOS Flex is an option for them?
If they have custom needs then they IME don't need much more than a CSV file and a simple ruby script that can import their label addresses from a CSV and spit them out to the printer a la ruby's Prawn.
The argument for training loses weight when each version of Windows and macOS changes fairly drastically you have to relearn with each major upgrade. Usually forcing hardware upgrades too well before the machine has stopped being viable. Whereas learning Linux once and that being all you have to know forever and can blast onto any machine, copy your files over, run your setup flat files or whatever you use to bootstrap your setup and IMO the training argument should push more to Linux but it never will for one simple reason. Support. If the manager can't offload a user needing help to support then all bets are off.
Not a business owner. Programmer who was a sysadmin in a former life and is familiar with all three O/S and a few others, e.g. embedded firware, etc.
In every organization, there is usually one app that ties a particular user to a non Linux OS, e.g. usually it's Adobe products, sometimes active directory, sometimes it's because "we have Access and it does everything we need it to and no we don't know what it does anymore", we need X software for X platform because skillsets and training.
A lot of lawyers would still (and some still are) be on WordPerfect if they could be, some accountants are probably still on FoxPro somewhere out there, but IME most users just need a Chromebook and a subscription to o365. Maybe ChromeOS Flex is an option for them?
If they have custom needs then they IME don't need much more than a CSV file and a simple ruby script that can import their label addresses from a CSV and spit them out to the printer a la ruby's Prawn.
The argument for training loses weight when each version of Windows and macOS changes fairly drastically you have to relearn with each major upgrade. Usually forcing hardware upgrades too well before the machine has stopped being viable. Whereas learning Linux once and that being all you have to know forever and can blast onto any machine, copy your files over, run your setup flat files or whatever you use to bootstrap your setup and IMO the training argument should push more to Linux but it never will for one simple reason. Support. If the manager can't offload a user needing help to support then all bets are off.
Mine is a side hustle / microbusiness, but 1) I use Mac 2) I don't want to use Linux, that's basically the whole story.
I guess you technically answered the question here, but I think some elaboration would add more value to the discussion. What are your reasons for not wanting to use Linux? Maybe someone working on Linux or Linux packages will learn something from detailed comments here and make it better for others!
It's more like, why would I want to use Linux? There's no reason for me to be interested in the first place. I get that other people want to, but this desire does not exist within me. I thought it was sort of bizarre that the question was framed like everyone wants to use Linux, which isn't true. I don't want to fuck around with a FOSS operating system, basically. I respect Linux, but it's not for me.
The OS is a small part of the business cost, and switching all productivity products is going to take retraining, lost productivity, and likely compatibility issues. Why would anyone do this to themselves?
Nothing.
I started my business (handyman/contracting) five years ago. It's been on Linux from day one. Why would I bother with anything else when Linux fills all my needs?
I started my business (handyman/contracting) five years ago. It's been on Linux from day one. Why would I bother with anything else when Linux fills all my needs?
Every engineering team I have worked on in the last 10 years has been almost exclusively Linux. But I've never seen other job types using it. That's fine by me though.
As a small biz you often hire contractors and its important that they focus on delivering value, not adhere to pre-established tool mandates.
As for perm staff, computers are cheap since they can last for years. Windows, and Macs aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
I do have a handful of Raapberry Pis in a food wearhouse but I'm not doing to demand any analyst to stop using Tableau on their mac when they digging through my order book looking for oppurtunities.
As for perm staff, computers are cheap since they can last for years. Windows, and Macs aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
I do have a handful of Raapberry Pis in a food wearhouse but I'm not doing to demand any analyst to stop using Tableau on their mac when they digging through my order book looking for oppurtunities.
CAD software.
For me it's the enterprise grade software stack my customers, clients, and suppliers are running.
Fancy Word formatting / referencing? Breaks in LibreOffice.
Excel with macros? Also breaks.
Spatial desktop stack? Pretty poor on Linux, compared to Windows anyway.
The spatial ETL tools I need are also better on Windows.
And then there's the support model. Of all my in house customers and clients, perhaps 2 or 3 out of potentially 100+ regular contacts have ever booted a Linux machine. Windows is familiar to them. Their customers, clients, and suppliers also use Windows for the most part.
All the above said, our cloud machines and most of our server stack are on Linux.
Fancy Word formatting / referencing? Breaks in LibreOffice.
Excel with macros? Also breaks.
Spatial desktop stack? Pretty poor on Linux, compared to Windows anyway.
The spatial ETL tools I need are also better on Windows.
And then there's the support model. Of all my in house customers and clients, perhaps 2 or 3 out of potentially 100+ regular contacts have ever booted a Linux machine. Windows is familiar to them. Their customers, clients, and suppliers also use Windows for the most part.
All the above said, our cloud machines and most of our server stack are on Linux.
With Outlook being mentioned as the "killer application" for staying with Windows, I'm curious to learn if anyone has evaluated Evolution (Linux groupware) and found it lacking in key areas? If so, which?
Nothing, I did. Everything runs Linux.
Everything requires 30+ steps
Adobe software
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